t1703 A teenage girl with braided pigtails walked up to a woman sitting alone on a park bench in Haarlem, Netherlands, in 1943, asked her name, confirmed her identity, and shot her dead before pedaling away on her bicycle — an act of assassination that saved hundreds of Jewish lives and opened one of the most … Read more
World War II hero Richard “Dick” Winters, the stoic commander of Easy Company whose story became the heart of HBO’s acclaimed miniseries “Band of Brothers,” once threatened to sever all ties with executive producer Tom Hanks in a furious dispute over profanity and a 𝒔𝒆𝒙 scene that he believed would desecrate the legacy of the … Read more
Als Amelie die Tür aufschloss, wusste sie noch nicht, dass dieser Abend ihr ganzes Leben zertrümmern würde. Aber als sie in den Flur trat, in dem es nach Sandelholz und einer süßlichen Blume roch, die nicht zu ihr passte, blieb sie stehen. Sie hörte Tills Lachen. Dieses tiefe, polternde Lachen, das sie früher geliebt hatte. … Read more
General George S. Patton Jr. ordered the execution of a German infantry general by firing squad at 6 a. m. on April 23, 1945, bypassing the Nuremberg tribunal system entirely, according to a handwritten pencil order composed at 11:47 the previous night on standard army notepad paper. The order was four sentences long. The last … Read more
LUXEMBOURG — A captured SS officer who threatened General George S. Patton inside his own headquarters during the Battle of the Bulge learned in devastating fashion that the American commander was not a man to be intimidated, according to accounts of the confrontation that have circulated among military historians and veterans of the Third Army. … Read more
Die Nachricht kam mitten in der Nacht, und ich wusste es, noch bevor ich das Telefon abhob. Reiner hatte einen Schlaganfall erlitten. Ich stellte das Telefon einfach auf die Anrichte und nickte, als die Schwester weitersprach. Sie hatte zuerst mich angerufen, weil ich nicht rangegangen war. Ich hätte keinen weiteren Anruf mitten in der Nacht … Read more
METZ, France — A four-star general climbed into a muddy drainage ditch in the rain of a November morning in 1944 and crouched beside a wounded private who had been waiting three days for someone to come back for him. The private, 22-year-old Pfc. Thomas Garrett of Tennessee, looked up and asked the only question … Read more
A single word, spoken quietly in a cold Dutch farmhouse on the morning of March 3, 1945, may have been the most explosive utterance of the entire Western Allied campaign — and no official record of it exists. According to accounts pieced together from staff diaries, private notebooks, and a letter that was written but … Read more
LONDON — In a candlelit private dining room at Claridge’s Hotel on the evening of August 10, 1943, Gen. George C. Marshall delivered a seven-point ultimatum that would decide the course of the Second World War and, with it, the map of postwar Europe. Prime Minister Winston Churchill had summoned the U. S. Army chief … Read more
VERSAILLES — In the cold early hours of January 22, 1945, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force became the setting for one of the most consequential private conversations of the Second World War, a meeting so sensitive that it was deliberately kept off every official record and conducted man to man, without witnesses, without minutes, and … Read more